Just Got Better, More Terrifying, And A More Important Lesson:

Just got better, more terrifying, and a more important lesson:

“In a 2013 interview, Petrov said at the time he was never sure that the alarm was erroneous. He felt that his civilian training helped him make the right decision. His colleagues were all professional soldiers with purely military training and, following instructions, would have reported a missile strike if they had been on his shift.” (Wikipedia, from BBC)

happy Stanislav Petrov Saves The World Day

On September 26, 1983, Duty Officer Stanislav Petrov, stationed at the Oko nuclear early-warning system command center, saw that his computer system was reporting that six missiles had been launched from the United States towards Russia.

Mr. Petrov correctly judged that the system was experiencing a malfunction and that the missile strike was a false alarm, and did not call for retaliatory launches of Soviet missiles, thereby preventing what would have been large-scale nuclear war.

I am very glad of Stanislav Petrov.

oh dear lord why

I somehow missed that one on its first go-round. I mean, I know YKINMKATOK, but I feel that this does not apply here. ;_;

I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.

Seriously. Like the treatment of Ann Coulter - I’ve heard people calling her a man, or calling her an ugly woman. Or talking about Kim Davis, that county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses, ripping apart her appearance as if it were a clue to her moral character. Stop. 

I just went to a presentation on implicit personality theories and learned that our perceptions of others’ attractiveness are a central personality trait that we attribute to them, and there are lots of sub-traits that we implicitly associate with attractiveness. So it makes sense that we would use insults of people’s looks to imply that they’re not good or trustworthy in other ways. We just need to be aware that this is a shitty thing to do and resist it.  

It’s like weird that I have to say this but insulting someone’s appearance isn’t a substitute for an argument and is basically always going to involve some fucked up shit so like

It’s unnecessary and immature and yeah it’s problematic and stop fucking doing it

Fantastic. I really feel that desperately wanting someone to talk about it, but not knowing how once it does come up. And I cannot WAIT to know what happens when the Aces play the Falconers... :D :D

Hi, first of all, I am hurt. Second, please please write a fic with Kent and Will falling in love or idk just something in which Kent gets a happy ending cause please. (Also I love your writing xx)

Hahaha– I am sorry for the hurt! The Kent mini-fic hit me hard too. I did not really know where it was going when I started it. Oops! 

As for writing a happy Kent-ending, know that you are not the only person who has asked me for it (or just stories dealing with how Kent interacts with Jack after he is out or Bitty or the rest of the crew). Right now, I’m editing my novel and trying not to let ficlets in my head.

… though, gosh, they are right there. bubbling under the surface…

Like, real talk, Kent must just be… fascinated. No, not fascinated. Desperate. Kent must be desperate for information about Jack Zimmermann. Once Jack comes out, he must watch that press conference a thousand times. And like… Jack doesn’t bother reading all the reactions but Kent must obsess over them and he must just live his life willing his teammates or coaches or Aces’ management to bring up the subject. He is too afraid to bring it up himself, no matter how much the words burn the back of his throat like cheap whiskey– he wouldn’t know what to say. How to make sure it came across as natural curiosity rather than something… more.

So he smiles at everyone and laughs at their jokes and makes a few of his own and all the time, he thinks Talk about Jack Zimmermann. Say you support him. Say you think it’s wonderful. Ask me what I think. Ask me if you think any of us are gay. Tell me it would be okay. Tell me you wouldn’t hate me. Please, god, please say something.

Of course, even when someone does, even when Swoops says, “You hear about Zimmermann? Pretty cool, huh? Good for him,” Kent’s throat locks up and it takes him a full seventeen seconds to get out, “Yeah, yeah, cool. Good for him.” and by that time, people have nodded and moved on. And just like that whatever moment might have been has passed and Kent has to start all over again. Please, please, ask me again, I’m sorry, I’ll do better this time, let’s talk about it more, please bring it up, at least one more time.

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Random Headcanon: That Federation vessels in Star Trek seem to experience bizarre malfunctions with such overwhelming frequency isn’t just an artefact of the television serial format. Rather, it’s because the Federation as a culture are a bunch of deranged hyper-neophiles, tooling around in ships packed full of beyond-cutting-edge tech they don’t really understand. Endlessly frustrating if you have to fight them, because they can pull an effectively unlimited number of bullshit space-magic countermeasures out of their arses - but they’re as likely as not to give themselves a lethal five-dimensional wedgie in the process. All those rampant holograms and warp core malfunctions and accidentally-traveling-back-in-time incidents? That doesn’t actually happen to anyone else; it’s literally just Federation vessels that go off the rails like that. And they do so on a fairly regular basis.

I’d like to thank my friend Avistew Teague for translating this!